Managing My Soil OR Talking Dirty

First an announcement from your friendly neighborhood organic farmer...there will be no photos in this post. Why? you ask. Because it's 99 degrees outside and I'm not going back out there.

It's been 6 years since I bought this little house in this little town. For 5 of those years I've been growing most of what we eat and 4 of those years I've been growing for other families, too.

I've had some time to find out what works here and what doesn't. My soil is a fine, sandy loam which means it doesn't hang on to nutrients very well. So I put the chickens to work. Throughout the off season I rotate the chickens through the beds. I let them scratch and dig, eliminating weeds and larvae. When they've completely destroyed any scrap of vegetation, I pile fall leaves about a foot deep in their temporary runs. They shred these leaves, working them into the soil and putting all those lovely micronutrients back. Oh, and they poop. A lot. They put a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus into the soil. I also save big quantities of egg shells. I grind them in a spare coffee grinder and use them and spent coffee grounds as side dressing during the growing season. Finally, I compost until I can't compost any more. I compost chicken, rabbit and goat poo, plus any leaves that may be left, kitchen scraps, garden debris like corn stalks and anything that will sit still long enough. Since I have little to no clay, this organic matter is the only thing holding on to those lovely little cations that make our plants grow.

Because of all this sand, keeping rain where it falls is a big challenge. I have about 3/4 of the garden converted to modified hugelkultur beds. I dig a trench about 18 to 20 inches deep and about the same width. I fill the trenches with logs and branches and use the excavated soil to raise a berm over it. When it rains the logs soak up the moisture and hold it down in the root zone where the plants can get to it. Then I dig another trench parallel to the previous one until my head hits the fence and I'm out of room. Over these berms I lay weed barrier. What! Over the whole thing? Yes, Virginia. Over the whole thing.

We have Bermuda grass. It is of the devil. You could drop a nuclear bomb on my town and, after the smoke clears, you'd find twinkies, cockroaches, and Bermuda grass all sitting there unscathed. So I cover the whole bed in weed cloth and plant my veggies right through it. This also keeps in moisture and reduces erosion.


Your soil will be different. You can get a good idea of what you're working with from the NRCS or USDA websites. Just google "soil survey" and your town or zip code. There is probably a map already online that shows what you have. There is also a Soils Web app for smart phones that gives you results based on GPS coordinates. It's very fun. 


Don't be afraid to experiment. It's hard to over-compost. The plants will tell you if you've made a mistake and many times they'll recover and still produce for you.



 

Organic Pest Management

The farm is asleep for the winter so I thought I'd take some time to gather my thoughts.

When people hear that I grow organically I often hear the same comment, "Oh, you must have a LOT of bug problems." Well actually, no I don't.

There is more to organic food production than simply switching to a different spray. Growing successfully without chemicals means changing how we thing about growing.

Plants are like children, you teach them as best you can but then you send them off to Middle School to deal with the bullies. Building good soil is vital to pest management. Your kids can't defend themselves if they live on a diet of junk food. Natural manures contain important macronutrients, dry leaves contain many important micronutrients, all those creepy crawlies that live in the soil process compost and manures and create a lovely environment for plants to grow.

The next step is to raise tougher plants.  No sissies in my garden. I want plants that will shrug off minor infestations and keep producing yummy food. I start most of my plants from seed. I find that seedlings I start myself make stronger, more vigorous plants. Sure, the transplants at the store look bigger but they've been coddled in greenhouses with artificial fertilizers. The ones you grow at home are simply stronger.

The next thing I do is to interrupt the life cycle of the bugs that would nosh on my plants. Many of them winter in the soil as larvae. Part of my routine is to confine the chickens to the dormant growing areas. The chickens will dig up those naughty larvae and feast on them while depositing more lovely manure and giving you eggs as well. Once the chickens have cleaned up a bed, I dump in a lot of leaves and let them shred and scratch until the leaves are incorporated into the top layer of soil.

Another trick I keep up my sleeve is to confuse pests that want to move in. Planting one wide swath of a single plant is like ringing the dinner bell for bugs. I mix up my planting in a sort of Permaculture way. Each bed contains something tall, something medium, and something short. Like Starbuck's. Venti plants include anything you can trellis, like green beans or things that will grow outrageously tall, like sunflowers. Grande plants are tomatoes, peppers, bush beans...you get the idea. Tall plants live close to the ground like sweet potatoes and creeping thyme. Mixing plants from different families means they are susceptible to different pests and pathogens. The bugs don't get established in a bed like this.

Inevitably a few undesirable critters try to move in on my plants. That's when I send in the troops. Chickens eat everything above the ground so the garden is off limits to them all season long. Turkeys, on the other hand, prefer bugs and won't eat plants until all the bugs are gone. Okay, mature turkeys will nosh on tomatoes but young ones just love bugs. This year I kept juvenile turkeys in the garden. It was open season on bugs.

 

assasin bug - one of the good guys

Then there are the bugs that eat bad bugs. I spent some time learning to identify insects so I could tell which ones to get rid of and which ones to welcome. Hoverfly larvae are great helpers as are assassin bugs. When you spray, even with an organic spray, you run off all the bugs, even the good ones.

                                                       cabbage worms AKA chicken snacks

At some point you'll probably have to remove bugs by hand. Cabbage worms come to mind. Don't drop them in soapy water or squish them under your shoes. Feed them to your chickens, they'll love you for it (did I mention they'll give you eggs in return?)

The most important thing to remember is to have a buffer between your garden and other areas where chemicals are applied. Pesticides can drift a very long way. If your neighbor insists on spraying everything in sight you may need a privacy fence and a dense row of shrubs to keep that stuff out of your yard. Lucky for me, my neighbors are way to cheap to spend a dime on their yards.

I wanted to write all this out, hoping it would prove useful for others. There's no fun in knowing stuff unless I get to share it. Take care friends.

We're Baaaack.

Hello everyone! I've been absent from my blog for quite some time. The winter was long and cooooold. I'm told Leos don't do well in the wintertime. Personally, I just want to curl up on the couch and hibernate until the sun is warm again. 

So I dreamed of sunny days and lovely flowers...and I digitized a new embroidery collection. Its called Bougainvillea and it has 19 designs and a full uppercase alphabet!

I have several strategies for getting through the winter. I sleep a lot. LOL, just kidding.  


I draw beautiful flowers and turn them into embroideries like the ones above. I peruse the websites of my favorite organic seed suppliers. I make garden plans on graph paper. I read my favorite gardening books, like this lovely one I got for Christmas from my awesome student and dear friend. I check my canning jars for chips and I count them, comparing how many I have with my huge (imagined) harvest. I choose a subject to research so I'm learning something new.


Then, just when I think I can't stand it anymore, something wonderful happens.

Winter Garden? AKA Itching To Plant

Winter has finally arrived here in my little goober town. There was a heavy frost last night and lows in the 20s are expected through the next 3 days.
Winter is always a hard time for me. I have little extended family left. My mother, my grandmother, my only aunt and all my great aunts and uncles are gone now so the family rituals are hard to maintain with just the kid and me. Winter is also the time when I don't get to play in the dirt.
Maybe staying indoors deprives me of Vitamin D from the sun but I hate being cooped up in the house. I search the web for more seed suppliers, researching veggie varieties I have not grown yet. I make little scale drawings of the garden space trying to figure how many more raised beds I can fit before I run into the neighbor's fence (do you thing he'd let me plant stuff in his yard too?). 

These beds have been awesome. So far they've been completely free of Bermuda grass. Very few weed seeds have made it into the raised beds and I keep the stuff that doesn't need polinating covered to keep the bugs off.   I built these beds early last Spring.  Here's how. You'll need 8 cedar 1 X 12s for every three beds, one cedar 2 X 4, landscape cloth and rust proof screws. Leave 6 wide boards full length, cut the last 2 wide boards and the 2 X 4 into 30" pieces.  Dig out a hole 31" X 8'2" and 3" deep. This step really is worth the effort. Line the hole with landscape cloth, extending the cloth at least a foot beyond each end. Screw two full length 1 X 12s and two 30" 1 X 12s to make a rectangle like in the photo. Place one 2 X 4 in the center as a brace and securely screw to the frame. Lower the frame into the hole you dug and backfill around the outside edges. Fill with garden soil, humus, compost, whatever combination you like to use as a growing medium.

The hoop covers are made from black plastic irrigation pipe. I cut 6 to 7' lengths and just pushed the ends into the soil. I tied the intersection with twine for stability. This one here is covered in cheesecloth 'cause I live in the boonies and couldn't get any tulle. But polyester bridal tulle makes a great row cover. It keeps the bugs from munching on your tasty plants and eliminates the need for pesticides.

That's all well and good but what about WINTER? Here's my experiment...cover those same hoops in plastic and grow cool weather veggies. It's still at the experiment stage but here's what the same bed looks like today.

Those lettuces look pretty darned happy. The plastic also keeps them from being injured by the dry winter wind. If they survive the next few days of cold nights I'll be able to declare a success. I'll report back to let y'all know how it goes.